EOH: Star of Night
by Seinaru Kibou no Tenshi
Summary: Jean Grey confronts the man who caused her to lose her psionic powers, and in the process confronts herself. (PG for LV)
1. Following Yonder Star

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DISCLAIMER\WARNING: Do not read this story if you do not want the ending of _Matter of Pryde_ spoilt. This is a sequel of sorts to it. I'm posting it because a) I'd imagine most people know how it ends and it's past time they saw what happened next and b) it's my Christmas contribution to the lists. I should also warn people it's not happy in the classical sense. I think it has a hopeful ending, rather than a happy one, but hope is always bittersweet. You've been warned . . . Apart from that, most of the characters belong to Marvel, but Alida is mine. The scenario and the incarnations of them belong to me, however. I'm making no profit whatsoever. Feedback to brucepat@iafrica.com or to hopes_angel2@hotmail.com. This story is _heavily_ inspired by an incident in _The Many-Coloured Land_ by Julian May. I'd like to think I've made it my own, but . . . I should acknowledge my debts. Title and subtitles are from "We Three Kings of Orient Are"

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EOH: STAR OF NIGHT

PART ONE OF TWO

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'FOLLOWING YONDER STAR'

After two years of rehabilitation, it had all come down to this: a stiff, white card printed with the outline of a star. As she had been taught, Jean Grey took a deep breath, inhaling through her nostrils and exhaling through her mouth, then concentrated her entire mind on the shape. She held it there for the briefest of seconds, seeing the black lines enclosed by and enclosing white space, then she cast it with all her strength in the direction of the booth opposite her. Exhausted by the effort, she collapsed back in her chair. Her heart was thumping too fast in her chest, her breath came in short gasps, and sweat slid warm down her face and shoulders. Zener stars seemed to shine against the wall. _Surely this time . . . _

The technician's tinny voice came across the intercom, "No."

The irritation, which had been acid in her belly the whole day, surged within her. _Doesn't the bitch know how hard I am trying? Why can't she just lie to me and say she had sensed something? _She crumpled the card in her hand and hurled it against the window between the booths. Instantly, remorse seized her, not because of what she had done but because outbursts of temper were a sign of personality maladjustment. She had to avoid that suspicion at all costs. The regs were clear about what was to be done in the case of mental instability: a partial lobotomy to remove the part of the brain that governed psionic powers. Training made a weapon of the psion's mind, and they could not risk that weapon going off at the wrong time or at the wrong person. She understood the logic, but she would not have that happen to her. She could not. As it was, there were already rumblings about pensioning her off for good, because of the chance of post-traumatic stress disorder. She sunk her head into her hands, rubbing her aching temples, feeling her scar as if it had come from a lobotomy. 

She heard the door between the two booths slide open and footsteps approach the table. She looked up to see Alida Douglas standing in front of her. She was a short, round woman with a grandmotherly look about her. Her pepper-coloured hair was cut into a neat bob, and smile-wrinkles fanned out from the corners of her eyes and her mouth. She looked as if she belonged by a fireplace with children clustered around her knees. Appearances had never been more deceptive than in her case. Alida swore like a trooper and had drunk more than one beneath the table, while her appetite for young and beautiful male cadets was legendary. It was bandied about that the boys in the Academy did most of their physical training in Alida's bed. Nonetheless, for all her roustabout ways, Jean liked her. She was a good and loyal friend, and a seemingly permanent fixture in the psionic corps.

"You need a break, Jeannie," Alida said bluntly, folding her arms across her ample chest, "You've been here for hours with no success. Besides, it's Christmas. No-one should have to spend it in a cold booth with only Zener cards for company." 

Anger spiked up in her again. The other woman had no right to tell her what to do, and none at all to call her Jeannie! She was her inferior! By the silver badge on her uniform's lapel, she was only an empath, while Jean's own was the platinum of the full-fledged psion. _It seems that everything has changed since my . . . accident._

"That's what you're doing," she pointed out sourly. 

"Someone has to monitor the prisoner's shields and I drew the short straw. What's your excuse?" 

Jean remained silent. How could she explain to Alida that she could not go home for Christmas, because her family was so very ordinary and so very human? Oh, they would be sympathetic and compassionate. They would say how very sorry they were for her loss. Her father would hug her and tell her it would be all right. Her mother would slip some extra meat onto her plate at dinnertime. Her sister would give her the number of her new quack to consult for help. Underneath it all, however, would be their deep and secret relief that a bullet had made her normal. How could she explain that? 

Alida took her silence as confirmation. 

"I bloody well thought so. You have none," her voice softened, "Go home, Jean. You need a rest. We can try again tomorrow."

Nodding her agreement, Jean pushed out her chair and picked up her coat. She did not want to leave - she wanted to try again and again and again - but arguing against common sense was another sign of a maladjusted personality. 

"I'll see you then," she said with a cheerful wave that she did not feel, before making her way out into the grounds. After the heated building, the night air was chill and crisp, reddening her cheeks, causing her lungs to ache. Unsurprisingly, given the temperature, snow had fallen while she had been indoors, but countless boots and tyres had already reduced it to grey sludge._ Typical. Others dream of a white Christmas, but I end up with the nightmare. _She paused for a moment, water seeping through her boots, looking around the grounds for her car. 

However, it was the prison on which her eyes ended up resting. The concrete building dominated everything, hunkering over the rest of the MPF's complex. Most of the criminals within its walls would have been found guilty of treason and sedition and were now being held there for interrogation or execution. One or two, however, would be MPF agents who had gone rogue and who were now being reindoctrinated. She had never been assigned to a reindoctrination, but death was preferable to it from what she had heard from her colleagues. Even without her psionic powers, she thought she could feel the miasma of pain and death that hung heavy around the place. Alida's words came back to her with new force: _Someone has to maintain the prisoner's shields. No surprises as to whom she means. It could only be **him**. It was **him**_ _who did this to me**. **_

Not understanding the impulse that moved her feet, Jean found herself walking slowly towards the prison complex . . . . 


	2. Born

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EOH: STAR OF NIGHT

PART TWO OF TWO

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'BORN'

Hearing the corridor's door bolt closed behind her, Jean Grey knew it was too late to change her mind. If she asked to be released now, after telling the guard that she was here to interrogate the prisoner, he would know something was amiss. And, because erratic behaviour from a psion was a cause for worry, he would report her to her superiors. And they would ask questions about why a mindblind woman was conducting an interrogation. And the rumblings of concern would become an avalanche that buried her and her chances of regaining her psionic powers beneath it. No, she had made her choice. Now, she had to live by it. 

Straightening her jacket in a futile attempt at gaining some composure, she walked briskly towards the Max Sec cells . . . and paused in shock. _That isn't him, is it? It can't be._ She had heard the prisoner described as charismatic and brilliant; as having charmed his rebels into following him through sheer force of personality. She remembered him as a monster, a psychotic who killed without compunction or remorse. She could not imagine this man possessing any of those qualities. This man was pitiful. He was curled up in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest, chin resting on them. She remembered thinking him beautiful when she had first seen him, but his months of confinement had ruined whatever looks he might have had. His hair was long and unkempt, and a ratty beard covered most of his face. Even his nakedness stirred no lust in her. He was too pathetic for that. His skin seemed to be stretched too tightly across his bones, his ribs and scapulae jutting out in a way that suggested he was dangerously close to starvation, and he was blue-mottled with bruises. 

He raised his head a fraction, evidently to see who had come to torment him now, and his eyes were dull and incurious. They took her in without interest. When she had worked as a psionic surgeon on the frontlines of the second Vietnamese War, she had seen similar expressions on the faces of the prisoners being marched into the American concentration camps. Men, women, children, they had all worn the same, numbed expression on their faces. It was the expression of a man who knew he was dead. 

"You are leBeau, aren't you?" 

"An' you're . . . a 'path," he rasped, slowly sounding out the words like a man unused to speaking, "Come . . . t'turn m'head . . . inside an' out . . . cherie?" 

Her hand went instinctively to the platinum badge on her lapel. Consisting of three, wavy lines in parallel, it was modelled on another of the Zener Cards. It marked her a member of the psionic corps as surely as the Black Stripes were distinguished by their stark, black uniforms or the Screaming Banshees by their orange jump-suits. _He noticed more than I first imagined_. 

"I was one," she kept her voice level, "You took it away from me." 

There was a flicker of puzzlement in his dead eyes. It was just a moment of confusion, but it was enough to cause hot anger to surge up in Jean's chest again.. _He doesn't even recognise me. He took away everything I was - he mindblinded me - he screwed up my entire life - and he doesn't even know me when he sees me! It was just another day's work for him! It was just another hit! _

"You don't remember me, do you? Shit, you probably don't even remember what you did to me," she spat, "Does the name Carl Irving mean anything to you or have you forgotten him too?"

"He . . . was a . . . doctor. He . . . exposed how ya government . . . was sterilisin' mutant women who . . . didn't need it. He reversed de procedure in some . . . cases. When he was exposed . . . hisself, he was sentenced . . . t'be hung. . . f'r treason. I . . . saved him," the words were flat and toneless, as if he were talking about somebody else, "I . . . don' understand what dat has t'do wit' you . . . cherie." 

"Do I need to refresh your memory about how you 'saved' him? Or do you remember that he was on the way to court when you ran in front of the prison transport? The driver pulled up short, thinking to save your life. He even went out to check that you were okay, that he hadn't hit you. Poor idiot. You killed him for his charity, before putting a bullet in the brain of the psion who was riding with him. My brain. Me."

Again, in her mind, she was sitting in the front seat of the prison transport, waiting impatiently for the guard to check the jaywalker was okay. They did not have time for delays like this. Irving's trial commenced in half an hour, and, as his reader, she was first on the stands. Her testimony would be all it took to convict him, unless the judge wanted to prolong the proceedings. She glanced up to where the guard was talking to the young man. She could hear him saying something about being more careful and she rolled her eyes. This was not the time to be giving lectures in road safety to a stupid boy. Suddenly, too suddenly for her to prevent it, the sun glinted off something in the jaywalker's hand, and a shot rang out in the quiet, dawn street. Red exploded onto the windshield and the guard crumpled, an almost comically surprised expression on his face. The young man turned to face her, his eyes blazing red, and her blood turned to ice within her veins as she saw him raise the gun to her. . . .

"Tell me, cherie," his dry whisper brought her back to the present, "When ya MPF . . . be finished wit' me, when dey've . . . juiced m'brain. . . t'squeeze . . . out all its secrets, do ya t'ink dey'll treat me any differently? Or do ya t'ink . . . dere'll be a bullet f'r me?" 

Jean could not answer him. With those hoarse words, it was as if a door had opened within her. It had been there the entire time, waiting and expectant, needing only the key to swing open and allow her access. Through it was a place where everything was strange and uncomfortable, where she no longer could know herself, where the distinctions by which she had lived her life were blurred. She turned away from him – from it - in silence. Aware as she was of what had happened within her, she still could not say 'we are alike'. 

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THE END


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